Owner: Wrench manufactured by Butler County company copied by Sears, made in China

Eric Felack | Valley News Dispatch - Keith Hammer, a project manager at Penn United Technologies, displays, from left, the versions of the multi-tool, the Bionic Grip, and the Bionic Wrench, which are manufactured for LoggerHead Tools at the Jefferson Township facility.

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With Chinese labor costs so low, it's hard for American companies, especially small ones, to manufacture their products in the United States.

But Dan Brown, owner of the Illinois-based Loggerhead Tools, thought it was important that his innovation, the Bionic Wrench, be manufactured in the States.

That's why when Sears agreed to sell the wrench, Brown enlisted the services of Penn United Technologies in Jefferson Township to manufacture it.

“There was no need for me to keep (the manufacturing) here, but I thought it was the right thing to do,” Brown said.

But, Brown said. after selling more than 250,000 wrenches through the store last year, Sears started to drag its feet when it came time to order more for Father's Day. Then, shortly before he was going to finalize Sears' Christmas order, Brown got a call from one of his customers.

The man said he had spotted a wrench that looked like the one Loggerhead made, but with slight cosmetic differences and labeled under Sears' own label. as the Craftsman Max Axess.

Making matters worse, the tool was made in China.

“We went from a strong wind at our backs to a smelly wind in our face,” Brown said.

Brown now is in a legal battle with Sears over whether the corporation infringed his patent.

Meanwhile, Penn United Technologies has about 100,000 wrenches, intended for Sears, on hold in its warehouse.

“We've been manufacturing the wrenches for about seven years,” said Keith Hammer, a project manager at Penn United. “We build the wrenches on a forecasted order, not the actual order.”

Hammer said that when Penn United found out it wouldn't need to make more wrenches, it didn't hire the 30 seasonal employees it normally does to help make the wrenches at Christmas time.

Hammer said the company, which employs more than 600 people, won't suffer too much of a financial setback because of the loss of the Sears deal. “I think they'll sell, but maybe not all at once,” he said. “Not too many places would take as much product as Sears.

“Right now, for us, it's a carrying-cost thing.”

For Brown's company, the cost might be much greater.

“We already had to lay off 30 people,” he said, “Sears was 60 percent of our business.”

Loggerhead filed a copyright infringement against Sears on Nov. 9 in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

In a written statement to the Valley News Dispatch, Sears denied any wrongdoing.

“We take intellectual property rights very seriously and respect those rights,” the statement said. “The allegations made by Mr. Brown simply are untrue, and we will vigorously defend against all of the allegations raised in his lawsuit.

“Despite some visual similarities to other tools on the market, the Craftsman Max Axess locking wrench operates in a different way, using a mechanism designed in the 1950s that Mr. Brown expressly argued to the patent office was different from his own design.”

Brown has no doubt he'll win his case, but it might come at a heavy cost.

“I know I'm going to win,” he said. “But by the time it gets back to me, the price will probably be so low that I won't be able to make it in the States anymore.”

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